


DEVOUR ME

by dramatichowell



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Phanfiction, The Last of Us - Freeform, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:53:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatichowell/pseuds/dramatichowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zombie Apocalypse AU - (The Last of Us)<br/>TEASER:<br/>I was eating breakfast when it happened.<br/>I still remember that morning clearly, how I’d been woken up earlier to the sound of helicopters flying over our apartment, and how the fear that coursed through my veins when the television aired a live feed of the chaos going on in the inner city.<br/>At first I thought it was a joke, until I watched a young bloke rip out an elderly woman’s throat out with his teeth.<br/>I remember screaming for Phil who had gone down to to the shops earlier to pick up more milk.<br/>I remember calling his phone for ten minutes, giving up after the twentieth time when he still didn’t answer.<br/>I remember crying because he never came back. I remember crying because I thought I’d lost my best friend, someone whom I’d shared my fondest memories with, the person I’d fallen in love with, and never had the chance to properly admit it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Isolated System

I was eating breakfast when it happened.  
I still remember that morning clearly, how I’d been woken up earlier to the sound of helicopters flying over our apartment, and how the fear that coursed through my veins when the television aired a live feed of the chaos going on in the inner city.  
At first I thought it was a joke, until I watched a young bloke rip out an elderly woman’s throat out with his teeth.  
I remember screaming for Phil who had gone down to to the shops earlier to pick up more milk.  
I remember calling his phone for ten minutes, giving up after the twentieth time when he still didn’t answer.  
I remember crying because he never came back. I remember crying because I thought I’d lost my best friend, someone whom I’d shared my fondest memories with, the person I’d fallen in love with, and never had the chance to properly admit it.  
-  
The ‘Infection’ started in London and only took around two months to spread to every corner of the globe. No one really knew what it was and scientists couldn’t get close enough to an Infected without getting ripped to shreds. The most people knew about it, was that the infection could be passed on by contact of bodily fluids. If you were lucky enough to escape an attack from an Infected with something as small as a bite or a scratch, you were a goner, regardless of your current health.  
After some time, it became apparent that the ‘Infection’ was fungal. Infected had begun to sprout fungi out of their body, older Infected grew massive mushroom like plates over their head and body which acted somewhat like a bodily armour, where as newly Infected only sprouted fungi out of their wounds, usually bites. The fungus seemed to have some sort of effect on the brain, causing the Infected to lose the ability to think rationally. All of what they previously were leaves their body, and they become a monstrously violent creature that should only be a thing of nightmares.  
On the third month, the news broadcasts had stopped, and the power failed. No where was safe.  
It was only then when I realised Phil wasn’t coming back. I’d been waiting for him for some absurd reason, hoping he would return, but I’d ran out of supplies and had to move out of the apartment.  
-  
It’s been almost eighteen months since the ‘Infection’ broke out, I’d left the city when I’d left the apartment. I’d only taken essentials with me, some clothes, a couple of kitchen knives, matches, and our med-kit. I needed to save room for food and other things I found on the way. I’d packed it all into Phil’s galaxy backpack, which had now frayed at the shoulder straps from me running with it twenty-four-seven, and the pattern had been smeared with some dirt in attempt to make it slightly less eye-catching. I’d left in jeans and one of Phil’s checked shirts, the yellow and black one I’d met him in. Sentiment had gotten the better of me.  
I’ve lost weight since I left the apartment, mainly due to the malnutrition, but also because I have been much more active. I’ve gained muscles in my legs from running and some in my arms and shoulders from defending myself from the infected, but I am still underweight. I was originally headed north of London, in attempt to try find the World Health Organisation (WHO), I’d actually met some people along the way who where headed the same way who were semi decent. I spent a couple of months walking in the group and had made my first friends since Phil, they weren’t the same, but the men women and children were nicer than being alone. Naturally when we finally reached it, it had been swarmed. In attempt to get out of the infected zone, I got disorientated. The last I saw of the group was a seven-year-old boy have his jaw torn off.  
I’m not quite sure where I am now.  
For the past couple of months, I’ve been walking. Only stopping to loot houses, kill Infected, and sleep.  
My body is becoming physically exhausted, I drag my feet along the ground when I walk now. It’s gotten to a state where I don’t even have the energy to fear the infected anymore, and that scares me. I’ve become an animal, another monster in this world, a killing machine that only knows how to survive. I haven’t spoken to anyone in weeks, and I can’t fall asleep unless I have a gun in my hand.  
I want to give up.  
The sun begins to set and I haven’t found an old house I can hold up in for the night yet. I rub my eyes and sizing up the trees around me, wondering which on will be sturdy enough to hold my weight. Every time I resort to this, it reminds me of Katniss Everdeen when she was in the arena for The Hunger Games.  
I haul my exhausted body up one of the larger trees, and tie myself to one of the branches as close to the top as I can get. From here I can see the whole of the forest and in the distance, a city and looks vaguely like somewhere I’ve been before. I stare at the city in the distance for a while trying to figure out which one it is and then it hits me.  
I’ve walked all the way from London to Manchester.  
My eyes widen at the thought of walking that far. I remember when I used to think it took forever catching the train from city to city, I never thought I would ever walk all this way.  
‘Daniel, you need to eat.’ The voice in my head commands me. It’s been doing that a lot lately.  
I reach for Phil’s, no, my backpack and pull out a can of beans and a small flask of water. I hate beans, but it’s the only thing I have, so I force myself to eat them. Surprisingly I manage to finish the beans, I must have been hungry. After downing the water, I pull out my sleeping bag and chuck on a fleece jumper. Satisfied that I am going to be warm during the night, I check the rope one more time, pull out my gun, and then let my eyes drift closed, allowing all the thoughts to leave my head. This was my favourite part of the day, where my brain would be at piece for those precious couple of seconds before I dove into the world of nightmares. The only thing worse than the nightmares however, where happy dreams. The happy dreams had Phil. Most nights I’d wake up crying.  
-  
I wake up to a stick cracking somewhere below me. My heart begins to race, and I quickly pack up my gear. I hear more cracks as the footsteps come closer. Whatever is down there could be anything, its too dangerous to climb down in the dark where I can’t see, and I would give away my position if I turned on the flash light I found the other week.  
I see a flash of white skin to the right of my tree, and hear a faint clicking sound from somewhere down below.  
Shit.  
After time, the fungus grows over the victim’s head, blinding them entirely. They then begin to rely purely on sound and a form of echolocation to locate their prey, aka me. I called these ones Clickers.  
The only way to stop them from noticing you, is to remain completely still and hope they don’t notice your presence, but normally they will hang around if they think that there is a possibility of prey nearby. I watch the creature as it moves towards the tree I’m in. The clicking sound is one of the only things that scares me these days. I wonder what it’s doing all the way out here.  
I am about to climb down the tree to slit its throat when another stick cracks to the left. The Clicker spins around, flailing its arms. It pauses for a second and begins to click loudly again, moving towards the sound of the stick. I hear someone whistling nearby and I frown, ‘Are they trying to get themselves killed?’.  
I angle my head towards the sound and slowly climb down the tree to follow the Clicker quietly, carefully placing my feet trying not to make a sound. I hear the Clicker screech at something somewhere ahead of me, the whistler has stopped. I see light coming from a house ahead of me in a clearing and I dart behind a tree, the Clicker is standing in the middle of a clearing, violently flailing its arms and cocking its head to the side in attempt to locate the whistler.  
I see a man with broad shoulders and dark hair emerge from the other side of the clearing with a machete in one hand and an odd looking contraption in the other. He sheathes his machete and uses the strange contraption to grab the Clicker around the neck. The Clicker struggles, but the metal rod prevents the creature from getting anywhere near the man, he must be strong to be able to hold the Clicker away from himself like that.  
I watch as the man guides the Clicker into the house.  
‘What was he doing?’  
He turns his back to me and I catch a glimpse of a strange red symbol spray painted onto the back of his jacket. My heart does that weird flippy-over-thing when I realise it’s the Fireflies emblem.  
The Fireflies aren’t bad people. Most of them are fair and genuinely think what they are doing the correct thing, however their methods have been questionable in the past. People I’ve spoken to who have been in quarantined areas have reported that they are known to launch attacks on the zones in attempt to round up any extra weapons or food rations. Innocent people who get in their way are often killed. I heard a rumour somewhere that the Fireflies are looking for a cure to this madness, a vaccine. However, whatever fungus is responsible for the behaviour of the Infected, is clearly highly resistant to the previous attempts to destroy it.  
The man exits the house after a short while and walks out of the clearing somewhere. I creep forward towards the house and pull out a long thin dagger I found at a military base earlier this summer.  
When I reach the house, I tap lightly on the door. If the clickers are loose inside the house, they would immediately run towards me. When nothing appears at the doorway, I slowly push open the door which has curiously been left unlocked. I creep inside and close the door behind me.  
The sight before me stops me in my tracks. The walls look like they have been clawed at with finger nails and blood covers nearly every inch of the room. A large pile of bodies is pilled up in the entrance to the hallway are emitting a pungent smell and I have to cover my nose with my jumper to stop myself from gagging.  
Every fibre of my being is telling me to get the fuck out of this house and run far far away, but I don’t. I am stood stock still in the middle of what used to be a lounge room.  
‘What the fuck is this place?’  
Before I can move further into the house, an arm wraps around my neck, threatening to strangle me. I use the strength I’ve gained and lean forward, using the weight of my attacker against them and throwing them to the ground. They let out an angry growl as they hit the floor and I turn to run but a large man is blocking the doorway. Slightly panicked at the thought of being trapped, I slide my dagger into his belly and push him away but his body armour is preventing me from hurting him. He slams my head into the wall behind me and my vision goes blurry. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth as I feel a boot slam into my chest.  
‘This is it. This is where I die.’


	2. Holding Onto You

I am back in the flat in London. Me and Phil are sitting next to each other, watching the Great British Bake-off with cereal in hands and smiles on our faces as we make fun of someone burning a cake. I turn to watch Phil as his blue eyes dart around the screen excitedly. His face is lit up and he simply looks…. happy. Its that type of happy that is infectious. The type that makes you feel like you can do anything in the world and no one would care whether you did it or not.  
So I do.  
I lean forwards and plant a kiss on his soft smile. I pull away quickly with shock when I realise what I have just done. When I feel brave enough to look him in the eyes again, he is staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read. And then everything happens very fast. He smiles and leans in for another, this time I am the one smiling. His kisses are everything I had ever imagined, soft and caring, yet full of control and sturdiness. He lifts his hand to my jaw to angle my head slightly so that he can deepen the kiss. My heart feels like it is about to explode it is beating so quickly. He pulls away to catch his breath and I look into his eyes once more.  
I swear the colour of them changes depending on the light but at this moment, they are stunningly blue and are full of emotion.  
But something is off. His eyes aren’t happy anymore, in fact, they look sad, almost distraught.  
His pupils begin to dilate until the whole of his eye is black. The darkness spreads across his face then down his neck to his body. I begin to panic and shuffle away from him, tears streaming down my cheeks. The blackness seems to ooze out of his body onto the couch, which then spreads to the rest of the room. I am surrounded in darkness. Fear and pain clutch at my heart and I scream for help, but no one comes. Phil is gone.  
I can feel my body thrashing and screaming but I can’t see anything, I whip open my eyes and I am no longer in the darkened lounge room in London.  
My cheeks are damp and I can feel that my eyes are swollen. I’ve had that dream before. I have it regularly in fact, probably once a week. And despite what I do to try and forget him, he always appears in my dreams. And the worst bit is, they are always so vivid. So real.  
I rub my eyes and sit up but a searing pain in my abdomen forces me back down again. I see white as I try to lift my head to get a look at it. My head is pounding and I feel sick.  
Dark red blood oozes out of a wound on my side, all my layers of clothing (including Phil’s shirt) and out of my jumper. I almost cry out at the sight of it and clutch at my belly, more blood oozing out as I move.  
I honestly don’t know what to do. I was a Youtuber, not a doctor. I feel so helpless lying on the ground with no clue how to stitch myself up. I guess I should have seen it coming to be honest, I’ve gotten through what life has thrown at me so far without something this bad, it’s probably about time.  
I look around me, I am literally lying in a pile of mud and sticky rotten leaves. My face feels like its been caked in the stuff and I can feel angry purple bruises forming on my arms legs and torso. I feel extremely disorientated and slightly confused as to how I have lasted so long lying on the floor without an Infected coming along for the free meal.  
To my left is my galaxy backpack. Its been left wide open as if its been tipped upside down so all the contents just fall out and then just thrown to the side. That’s probably what happened, the med-kit from home is gone and so is my gun. I had no food left anyway.  
I look up towards the sky. My eyes are threatening to spill over with tears and my lip begins to tremble. I have always been an emotional person, Before, I would cry if I got frustrated or even if I was left in the dark for too long. I used to think I was a wuss, but now I just let the tears flow. I have an excuse to be ‘upsetti spaghetti’ as Phil would call it.  
My sobs pull at the wound and make me gasp, but I don’t care, it will probably be over soon anyway. I decide to just wait it out. Wait to just bleed out in this puddle of mud that I was most likely beat up in. I hope it’s nice where ever you go after life. In fact, I think anywhere is nicer than this shithole.  
I reach over and grab the bag pulling it over to me. The only things left inside are a t-shirt and a small polaroid photo that I forgot I even put in there. I flip it over and smile for the first time in months.  
It’s a photo of me and Phil. We took it during one of his liveshows together, I remember laughing because we had to tilt the laptop screen up so the audience couldn’t take screenshots of the frankly hideous faces we were pulling. The memory makes me laugh a little, which I regret instantly because of the pain it gives me. I don’t think I’ve laughed since I lost Phil.  
I picture his beautiful blue eyes and the way they lit up as he smiled, creating an image brighter than the sun itself. What I would give to see those eyes again. I close my own and clutch the photo in attempt to go to sleep, hoping that I will never wake up again. I don’t want to live in this world anymore.  
Suddenly my eyes snap open again when a thought creeps into my head.  
What if Phil isn’t dead?  
He probably is.  
What if Phil isn’t dead and I will never see him again simply because I gave up?  
I’m going to die anyway, there is no point trying.  
What if Phil is looking for me?  
Fuck you Phil.  
I grab the t-shirt from the bag and stuff it in my mouth and attempt to sit up. My side sears in pain and I scream into the shirt, which muffles it slightly but it doesn’t drown out as much sound as I hoped. God I hope there aren’t any Infected nearby.  
Once I am finally up against the tree behind me, I rest. My vision is has turned to shit and I feel like I might faint. ‘Fuck you Phil.’  
I peel off the jumper and scream some more into the shirt when the fleecy material sticks to the blood on the wound. ‘Fuck you Phil.’  
I spit out the t-shirt and push it onto the gash into my side, afraid to look at it in fear of throwing up. ‘Fuck you Phil.’  
I wince when the material meets my flesh but keep the pressure on it. Its already starting to bleed through. ‘Fuck you Phil.’  
I manage to wrap the jumper around my middle, securing a temporary bandage across the area where there is the most blood.  
Once I’m done, I scream as loud and as hard as I can.  
I regret it almost instantly because some birds fly away in the trees above me meaning something probably heard me, but it felt good to get that off my chest.  
I look down at the little polaroid, which now has bloody fingerprints along the side of it. The thought of seeing Phil again fills me with determination. I place the photo carefully into the backpack again and pull out my flask of water, which has a small mouthful left. I down it and brace myself to stand.  
“I’m coming for you Phil.”


	3. Time Is Running Out

Blood is one of those things that people underestimate. Blood doesn’t simply ooze out of a deep wound. It flows almost like water until there simply isn’t any left in you to flow out.

I unfortunately underestimated the consistency of blood.

I lean against a house in the middle of a street. The blood from my side quickly staining the wooden panels a nasty shade of red.

My head is spinning but I’ve become numb to the pain. I’ve been walking for god knows how long with only one thing on my mind. Phil.

I look to my side and I see a tall black haired boy lying unconscious on the floor a couple of meters away from me with a vicious bite on his cheek. His lips have next to no colour left in them and his breathing is ragged. It’s not Phil but it makes my heart skip a beat anyway. There must be more Infected around somewhere. This boy will turn soon.

I manage to stumble into the house and find my way into the bathroom where I assume the previous owners of the house kept their medical supplies. I shakily reach up to the cabinet above the cracked sink and pull it open, leaving a bloody handprint on the handle. Inside is a small roll of gauze and a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide and I thank god for small mercies that there is actually something of use in this house. I grab both of them and move backwards to sit on the lid of the toilet behind me, anxiously peeling back the makeshift bandage I made in the woods.

My heart rate begins to elevate and the site of more blood makes me tremble slightly. I grab some toilet paper and wipe away the majority of the drying red liquid from the gash, which turns out not to be a gash.

There are shallow ragged teeth marks around a chunk of missing flesh.

My hands begin to shake violently and I feel the colour drain from my face. A wave of nausea washes over me when I realise what has happened. I was bit while I was lying unconscious in the mud. I look around in panic quickly before throwing up bile violently in the bathtub next to me. The acidity on my tongue makes me feel even worse and I begin to dribble and cry again.

I sit for a couple of minutes before I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My watery eyes have bags under them and I look pale from blood loss, but my chapped lips still have colour in them which makes me frown. Normally when someone has been bit, their lips go very pale and the bite begins to sprout small fungi only a couple of hours after. They turn after only the 5th hour if they are lucky.

I look down at my own bite and inspect it closer.

There is no sign of anything growing out of it. I poke at it almost expecting it to suddenly sprout out some sort of mushroom, but nothing happens. I must have been unconscious for at least a day judging by the lack of food I vomited up, and I have been walking (well more like stumbling) for about an hour so I should have at least turned by now, but I feel normal. If anything I feel faint, but that’s probably just blood loss rather than the Infection.

My brain kicks into overdrive, bombarding me with questions; Will I turn? What if I don’t turn? What if I’m immune? What if I could help cure this madness? How the fuck am I not dead yet?

I look at the Hydrogen Peroxide sceptically, I remember my mum used to put the stuff on my knees and hands when I came home from school with nasty looking grazes from being pushed to the ground by the dickheads who bullied me.

I unscrew the cap and pour some onto the bite, I hiss as it makes contact with my skin. The stuff stings like a bitch. My hands shake and my eyes water as I force my self to pour more of it onto the deeper parts of the bite. I don’t even know if this is going to do me any good, but its better than dying from an infection other than THE Infection.

I quickly wrap the gauze around my middle again and stand up. My vision goes blurry momentarily and I have to grip onto the sink again to keep myself up right as the little blood I have left makes its way back up to my head.

I hear a noise from somewhere inside the house and my ears perk and my eyes widen, I automatically drop into a crouch. It’s become a habit to crouch around danger. A vase smashes in the room next to me and I cringe at the sound, knowing it will only bring more. I am in no state to fight.

I quickly stuff the left over gauze and the botte of Hydrogen Peroxide into my bag and sling it onto my back. The only weapon I have left if the dagger which my attackers clearly didn’t have a use for. I slowly unsheathe it as the uneven footsteps of the Infected comes closer to the bathroom I am currently crouched in.

My heart stops when the black haired boy stumbles into view. Painful groans emit from his mouth as if each step is causing him immense torture. His cheek has turned a paper white colour and there are bubbles at the skin where the bite was.

When he sees me, his shrieks and he runs towards me with his arms outstretched towards me. His eyes are fearful however and his isn’t as aggressive as a Clicker.

Newly Infected are the least dangerous, but most scarring. Originally it took me a while to figure out why, but eventually I realised its because their eyes were still human. The person inside doesn’t want to hurt you, their body does. Its as if the Infection hasn’t spread to that part of the brain yet and the person is still inside.

I quickly stand and knife the boy swiftly in the skull. He freezes for a moment before becoming limp and slumps to my feet. I pant, clutching at my side which is already starting to bleed through. Out of habit I search his body for anything useful. He has a couple of bullets for a gun I currently don’t have, but I pocket them anyway.

I study his face momentarily. He looks so similar to Phil, but younger. He has high cheek bones and brilliant blue eyes. It makes me sad to see someone this beautiful in this state, so I close the eyelids of the boy and make my way out of the house again, thinking only of the boy I lost. Thinking of the boy I love.

-

I’ve been hallucinating.

Every time it happens, I have to stop and rub my eyes to make sure he truly isn’t there. He looks real, he looks pretty. Sometimes I reach out to touch him but my hand simply passes through and he vanishes. I’ve been stumbling aimlessly down the road into a small town. Stopping when I hear a voice whisper to me. His voice keeps calling out my name.

‘Dan.’ I turn around but its no one is there. Its not real.

My head is spinning and I stumble almost falling over. I feel like I’m dreaming. Nothing actually seems real to touch and nothing is focused. I try to continue forward but my feet aren’t complying to my body. Panic arises when I realise I am loosing control of my body, I’ve lost so much blood and my time is running out. I feel a hand grab my shoulder and I quickly turn drawing my knife.

It’s him again but something is different.

He isn’t wearing his normal clothes, he is wearing a baggy brown coat. His shoulders are broader than they used to be. He holds a machete and a long weird contraption I’ve seen before but I can’t put my finger on where I’d seen it.

His voice is soft and almost disbelieving.

“D-dan….?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOOH WHO COULD IT BE?!?!?! ;))))))  
> Please let me know if you enjoyed this chapter or if you have picked up on any spelling errors and what not that I have missed! I've really enjoyed writing this so I hope y'all enjoy


	4. Monsters

A cold hand rests itself on my forehead and I feel my body jerking as strong arms lift me from the ground. I hear something wet spill to the ground in the process and my clothes are damp with something red.  
I keep fading in and out of consciousness.  
“Stay with me Dan…”  
My eyes snap open at the sound of a familiar voice and I look up at the man carrying me.  
His face is laced with worry and his blue eyes are shining with tears as he runs. His hair is longer than it used to be but he has pushed his fringe up away from his face. His cheeks are red and his lips are that perfect pink they always used to be.  
“Phil?”  
-  
I wake up on an old bed alone in a room.  
Suddenly I remember Phil and sit upright, scanning the room for him, but he isn’t here. On the bedside table is a weak little lamp which is producing a small amount of light, otherwise there is nothing but a lonely chair. My eyes begin to water and I curse myself for being such a wuss.  
Of course it wasn’t him, who am I kidding Phil is dead somewhere far far away.  
I look down at myself. I am in some ugly white t-shirt and grey track pants which I don’t recognise picking up anywhere. I lift up the shirt to find a professionally wrapped white bandages covering my bite. I have a hospital band around my wrist with large black letter in bold printed onto it. “BITTEN”. Its then I realise my wrists and ankles are also chained to the bed.  
The glass door opens and an old man walks in with a white lab coat and thin spectacles resting on the end of his long nose. His eyes are soft as he walks towards me with a clipboard and a pen, but there is something about him that makes me feel uneasy.  
He smiles and takes a seat on the wooden chair beside me.  
“Hello.” He says simply, nothing more.  
I furrow my brow, sort of expecting him to say something a little more than that but manage to find my voice.  
“Who are you?” I ask him slowly, scanning his features automatically for any signs of weapons.  
“I’m not armed.” He states simply, lifting up the sides of his coat to reveal his belt which indeed was missing a gun holster.  
I study the man. His hands are clean and there is no sign of dirt under his nails at all. His face is lined but not worn and tired like most people you see outside. He almost looks as if he hasn’t been outside at all since Before.  
He seems to be scanning me as well, his eyes darting across my face, almost as if he is looking for something before resting at my lips, making me shift uneasily.  
He stands and begins to move towards me, placing two of this fingers on my wrist and pausing momentarily as he feels for my pulse. He then continues to push my fringe away from my forehead and replace it with a cold hand.  
Once he is done, he makes a few notes on his clipboard and walks out of the room and pauses at the door, nodding to someone who is just out of view.  
Seconds later another man walks in and I freeze.  
My heart begins to quiver in my chest with excitement and my hands begin to shake in disbelief.  
“You’re alive.” We both say at the same time before laughing and promptly bursting into tears in front of each other. Phil Lester quickly moves towards my bed and engulfs me in a hug.  
His strong arms hold me upright and I feel my body relax into his embrace, my arms are still strapped to the bed but I manage to compensate by tucking my face into the crook of his neck. I take a deep breath and breathe in his scent, just being in his arms makes me feel safe.  
It takes me a moment to realize how heavily I’m sobbing, but I honestly couldn’t care less. I’m the happiest I’ve been since the outbreak of the Infection. I’m the happiest I’ve been in almost a year.  
“Oh my god Dan I thought you were dead” Phil chokes out and squeezes me harder before pulling away to look me in the face. “Are you ok? Do you need anything? Are you hurting?”  
I laugh softly and decline his offers. “What happened to you Phil? I waited at the flat for so long for you to come back and you didn’t and I got so worried and-“  
Phil cuts me off from my ramblings by giggling, “I missed your rambles” he smiles and I blush slightly looking down at my hands, “I’ll tell you what happened and then you tell me what happened to you.”  
“We have a lot to catch up on then,” I joke, “Am I allowed to take these off?’ I ask shaking my wrists a little and looking at him hopefully.  
He looks upset momentarily before shaking and mumbling something about ‘standard protocol’ and how he already broke it by hugging me. He throws me a sad smile before helping me lean against the bed head and making himself comfortable in the chair beside me.  
He eyes begin to go to another place as he tells his story and I watch his face for every moment of it, his beautiful eyes shining as he tells his story or his arms flailing around as he imitates the infected and how he fought them off. Oh how I’ve missed this boy.  
It turns out that Phil was very close to the initial break out of the Infection. All those months ago when he was out getting milk, he had stopped by at the chemist to buy some paracetamol for the cold that had been bugging him for a while. When he got there, there were people screaming and actually taking medication from the shop itself.  
Initially confused Phil had wondered outside to where he was confronted with his first Infected. His smile disappears as he talked about the little girl who launched herself at him. He had managed to fight her off due to his sheer size but it was probably one of the most traumatic experiences someone could witness. Children don’t usually survive the Infection before it reaches their brain, you rarely see Infected children.  
Phil continues to tell me about how he was then forced to flee from the streets as the numbers of Infected increased dramatically in the time he had spent fighting off the little girl.  
As he ran back to our home, he was taken by a group of people he didn’t know. They turned out to be the earliest of the Fireflies. Phil had only stayed with them because he had no choice. He could only assume I was dead when they bombed the city.  
A memory sparks off in my brain and I tell him I remember the horrendous sounds of the jets flying over home and bombing the inner city of London. Miraculously it managed to miss home, but when I had walked outside, I had truly got to see the devastation the bombs had. Many of the iconic sites were destroyed, including the London Eye and people were dead in the streets around me. I don’t tell him that I had run straight back into the apartment and cried.  
He then tells me about the months he spent with the Fireflies and how he actually managed to get pretty high in their ranks, regardless of how he felt about their actions.  
Phil apparently doesn’t like any of the men he works with, but they pay him respect as he is one of the most skilled out there with a machete.  
He tells me that Fireflies challenged him once because he was one of the view that refused to kill innocent people from quarantines, but didn’t push the issue further when he simply punched is accuser straight in the nose and continued to devise a plan on how to raid the quarantine with minimal casualties.  
It’s weird listening about Phil killing people, it sounds kind of monstrous that someone so pure has turned into someone who kills, but I guess that’s something survivors have to do these days. I’ve killed people too. I guess we are all monsters.  
He tells me about his plans to get out of this place sooner or later and how he strongly disagrees on the current plans currently being executed.  
“I was actually in the process of sneaking out of this hell hole when I stumbled upon you.” He says, pausing slightly and looking at me with a worried expression.  
“What?”  
“Dan… they’ve been experimenting on people.”  
I frown. “Experimenting? What would they be experimenting? A drug? Have they found a cure Phil?”  
Phil bites his lip and looks at his hands before looking back up at me.  
“No, they’ve been testing for immunity...”  
My eyes widen and it all makes sense.  
The cabin, the men who appeared from no where, the bite.  
“Phil… how many are there?” I manage to choke out after a while.  
“How many what? Fireflies? Quiet a lot but I mean, we are all spread out acro-“  
“No not Fireflies, how many people are immune?”  
He fumbles with his hands and closes his eyes before taking a deep breath and looking at me directly in the eye.  
“Dan you’re not the only one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOH SO HOW ARE WE LIKING THESE CLIFF HANGERS??!!1?!!  
> sorry i really would stop finishing chapters with them but then it wouldn't be as interesting so fight me m8.  
> Also! This chapters featured song is Monsters by Ruelle. I am thinking of making a playlist later on once i've completed this story of all the chapter songs. (if you haven't realised by now that the chapters are all named after songs then... suprise??)  
> Feedback is appreciated!  
> Also if you actually have any questions about updates or the fic in general, please send me an ask on tumblr @dramatichowell, as I am most likely to answer them there!


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